This and that to end your weekend. – PressProgress takes a look at the OECD’s long-term economic projections – which feature a combination of increasing inequality and slow growth across the developed world, with Canada do worse than almost anybody else on the inequality front unless we see a shift
Continue readingTag: pressprogress
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – PressProgress highlights how the Cons’ stay in office has been marked by temporary rather than permanent jobs, while Kaylie Tiessen writes that precarious work is particularly prevalent in Ontario. And Erin Weir notes that more unemployed workers are now chasing after fewer job
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Anne Manne discusses how extreme wealth leads to narcissism and a lack of empathy, while pointing out that to merely recognizing the problem goes some way toward solving it: Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich discusses how a reasonable balance of economic and political power is necessary to any protection of meaningful personal freedom: In reality, corporate free speech drowns out the free speech of ordinary people who can’t flood the halls of Congress with campaign
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman offers a response to the assertion that accumulated wealth should be considered as costless capital: (I)f there’s one thing I thought economists were trained to do, it was to be clear about opportunity cost. We should compare accumulation of dynastic wealth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne discusses the need to address inequality through our political system. But that will require significant pressure from exactly the citizens who have decided they’re not well served by today’s political options – and Trish Hennessy’s look at Canadian voter turnout reminds
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Neil Irwin highlights the reality that top-heavy economic growth has done nothing to reduce poverty in the U.S. over the past 40 years: In Kennedy’s era, [the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory] had the benefit of being true. From 1959 to 1973,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Gary Engler explores Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century from the perspective of a reader who’s far more skeptical than Piketty about the prospect of tinkering around the edges of our current corporatist economic system. And Seth Ackerman writes that Piketty’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Joseph Stiglitz offers his suggestions (PDF) for a tax system which would encourage both growth and equality: Tax reform…offers a path toward both resolving budgetary impasses and making the kinds of public investments that will strengthen the fundamentals of the economy. The most
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, expanding on this post about the Cons’ ruthless discipline in keeping the benefits of any tax policy from flowing to those who need it most – and pointing out the need for a strong challenge to that single-minded focus on withholding money from the poor. For further reading…– Again,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – PressProgress digs into the PBO’s report on tax giveaways to look at what Canada has lost from the Cons’ cuts to federal fiscal capacity – and how little has been gained as a trade-off: (T)he Harper government, by starving the public coffers, is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Tavis Smiley discusses the need to speak realistically about the causes and effects of poverty, rather than simply dismissing real human costs as somebody else’s fault and problem. And similarly, Tim Stacey comments on the appalling “empathy gap” – which sees upper-class
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig writes that while the Cons don’t want to bother listening to the public about much of anything, they’ll always make time for a disgraced former advisor lobbying on behalf of oil barons: In…new RCMP allegations,… [Bruce] Carson was working for the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thom Hartmann discusses how Reaganomics were designed to crush the U.S.’ middle class – and have succeeded in that goal: Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, discussing what Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found (PDF) in looking at which preferences actually shape U.S. public policy – and what needs to happen for the needs of the general public to be given some actual weight in government policy choices. For further reading…– Again, Larry Bartels, Kathleen
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ezra Klein comments on the U.S.’ doom loop of oligarchy – as accumulated wealth is spent to buy policy intended to benefit nobody other than those who have already accumulated wealth: On Thursday, the House passed Paul Ryan’s 2015 budget. In order to get
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Coyne sees the powerful impact of local forces on nomination contests as evidence that grassroots democracy is still alive and well in Canada – no matter how much the Cons and Libs may wish otherwise: What’s common to both of these stories
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Macdonald studies Canada’s massive (and growing) wealth gap, and proposes some thoughtful solutions to ensure that growth in wealth results in at least some shared benefits: Attempting to limit inequality through traditional measures like restricting RRSP contributions or introducing new tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Mitchell Anderson compares the results of corporate-friendly Thatcherism to the alternative of public resource ownership and development in the interest of citizens – and finds far better results arising from the latter: Thirty-five years after she swept to power as British prime
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Economist looks at the relationship between equality and growth, showing that there’s at worst little evidence that fairer economies have any trouble matching their more-polarized counterparts – and best some indication that they perform better: Inequality is more closely correlated with
Continue reading